It's difficult to imagine how a financial crisis could help a city. How it could stimulate thought and drive innovation forward. Yet it appears this is exactly what's been happening in Europe over the past few years. While many of us have focused on the continent’s financial recovery and growth, others have been busily using Europe's economic doldrums to kick-start long-term change and create a new vision for a smart and sustainable future.

Big data is a hot topic. Everyone from world leaders, to CXOs, to analysts, to media and just about anyone connected to the technology industry is talking about the transformative powers of big data. It even made it onto the agenda of the 2012 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. If the hype is to be believed, it has the power to transform businesses, governments and even society itself. It has the power to bring new insights into just about everything and drive a new era of intelligent understanding.

Barely a week passes without new analyst figures announcing the continued fierce growth in bandwidth and the concern that our networks may soon run out of capacity. This week it was the turn of IDC to release its findings on the state of the networking industry. IDC’s figures confirmed previous studies that show the dramatic growth in broadband connectivity. It expects to see Internet users to reach 2.7 billion by 2015. This represents over 40% of the world’s population and nearly a billion more users than in 2010.

As the technology world grapples with the impact of Steve Jobs’ resignation, many journalists and analysts are in a reflective mood, pondering Jobs’ legacy and achievements at Apple. One small part of this legacy will be Jobs’ role in driving the continued video explosion. Jobs acted as a key enabler in creating almost ubiquitous access to video, both in regards to consumption and to sharing. One need only look at the amount of YouTube content viewed on iOS devices to understand the figures involved.

Over the past few weeks, the debate on Internet regulation has once again been thrust into the media spotlight. Largely driven by political events in Europe, these debates have centred upon the rapid development of the Internet and the level of regulation required to effectively govern it. Indeed, it’s the whole question of governance and the comments made by President Sarkozy at the e-G8 that have brought this topic bubbling to the fore. President Sarkozy’s hard-line stance that governments need to be responsible for developing and enforcing stricter digital laws comes at a time when sensitivity on Internet freedom is still high. In his speech, Sarkozy stated that Internet companies have to know where the red line is.